Computers are accepted tools in today's newspaper or the like production methods. The computer can store inputted text, provide hyphenation and justification to lines, and assemble the component stories of the page in an ordered sequence within its memory.
These computer internal operations are relatively high speed, but, when the computer is ordered to output the information, its speed is cut drastically by the limitations of the output devices to which it is connected.
Newspapers and the like presently output computer stored text in columnar form, process photographs separately, assemble these page components by a hand paste-up operation, produce a photographic negative, and finally make a printing plate. This process currently requires about 40 minutes per page.
In addition, illustrations, especially photographs, can, with present technology be digitized and stored within a computer memory. However, such a procedure is not used in practice because it requires an excessive amount of memory for storage of each illustration. This requires a considerably larger, more expensive computer than newspapers presently find economical and, therefore, is not a practical solution.
Utilizing the teachings of the present invention, the equipment, with its related technique, is aimed at producing a page, photographic negative, or plate from start to finish in ten minutes or less and with economically feasible computer hardware.